Serrano soccer player Rodriguez survives tumutulous injury

At little after 4 a.m., Bryan Rodriguez is ready for a second trip to the emergency room.

Not that he wants to go — he needs to go. Pain is shooting up his sides.

It's already been a long night. An earlier trip to St. Mary Medical Center resulted in a bruised ribs diagnosis.

"I had a bad cough at the time," Rodriguez said. "The hospital was packed and they just kind of gave me an X-ray and some pain killers."

The pain killers aren't working. The pain is too great to sleep through.

Back in bed trying to sleep or at least make it through the night, he knows something is still wrong. With any movement only worsening the constant pain throughout his sides, Rodriguez picked up his cell phone and called his parents, who were still sleeping just down the hallway. Somehow he manages to push out the words.

Soon he's off in an ambulance to Loma Linda University Medical Center.

It's October. This is supposed to be Bryan Rodriguez's favorite time of year — soccer season. It's supposed to be the season he's been building up to for four years — his senior year.

Rodriguez was a regular on Serrano's varsity team during his junior season. This was supposed to be his year. Already a captain on the team, Rodriguez was the Diamondbacks' offseason leader. He organized workouts and study sessions to get his teammates ready for the season.

Now he's bed-ridden in a hospital with relatively few answers and a nagging pain a long way from the pitch.

Doctors have confirmed he had a ruptured spleen, but how and why it happened are still a mystery.

"I had had bruises and stuff like that before, but something on the inside is a different feeling," Rodriguez said. "Not knowing the reason for the pain is kind of scary."

This isn't the first time Rodriguez has dealt with a mysterious injury, but by far the most frustrating. He started experiencing pain in one of his wrists during his sophomore year after snowboarding and working landscaping jobs. A trip to the doctors revealed it to be sprained wrist — or so they thought.

A second trip, a new diagnosis. Rodriguez learned his wrist had a hairline fracture. Because the fracture was never caught it grew into a broken bone. Still he managed to stay on the field for his junior season. He played with a cardboard splint to protect the wrist and made a deal with his parents to get surgery as soon as the soccer season ended. While he played out the prep season, it cost him time playing for a club team.

While doctors are still running tests on his spleen, he was originally told he'd be out from physical activity for a year, maybe six months if he was lucky. That meant the end of his high school soccer career.

"He heard the doctor, but he knew in his heart that was not what was going to happen," Bryan's mom Wendi said.

"I was just thinking, whatever I could do to get back before that time," Rodriguez said. "I was pretty upset. I remember for a few days I was pretty bitter in the hospital. Six months was mostly what I was hearing from the doctors ... I was pretty depressed knowing that I wasn't going to be able to play."

Teammates, friends, family and Serrano coach Harvey Gamble all visited Rodriguez during his stay in the hospital. Gamble avoided any talk of Bryan's soccer season ending before it began, instead wanting to remain positive, but he saw the photos of Bryan's oozing spleen and wasn't expecting him back for the season.

"Well I'm not a doctor by any means but when they go over the damage and where it was ... the concern was that it had bleed into his stomach and in his chest cavity area," Gamble said. "Anyone could have looked at that and said, 'Whoa, that's huge.' It looked like a lava flow coming out of (his spleen) to be honest."

After a week lying in a hospital bed, Bryan had had enough. He wanted to play soccer, but mostly he wanted to do something other than sit in a hospital.

"I think I watched Sports Center like 20 hours a day," Bryan said. "That's when I figured they don't even do new episodes, they just replay them over and over.

"I don't want to ever go back. I just don't like the atmosphere of them. When you visit people there it's one thing. Being on the other side of that, it's no fun.

While he was improving in the hospital, there were still many unanswered questions. What caused the spleen to rupture? The potential answers included cancer.

It turned out a bout with mononucleosis, which Bryan didn't even know he had, caused the rupture, a fact that relieved Bryan's parents Wendi and Mario. Still, they felt the need to be cautious, optimists balancing between Bryan's health and his desire to keep playing.

"We really watched over him and we overprotected him," Mario said. "We knew as parents how hard he wanted to play and how hard he was willing to work to have a good season."

Soon doctors cleared Bryan to play. He suited up for the annual Serrano alumni game toward the end of November and felt fine. He played with a special pad to protect his sides which Wendi had altered from linebacker pads.

"My endurance wasn't up to what it was, but it was enough," Bryan said. "I think I played every minute of the alumni game."

Bryan didn't just make it back to the field, he reclaimed his role as the leader of the Diamondbacks.

"We just kept thinking when we get him back our back line will be OK," Gamble said. "Sure enough our backline was OK."

Bryan finished the year as an honorable mention selection on the All-MRL team.

"When he came back, he was just mentally as focused as he could be," Gamble said. "I think I lot of people would have called it quits. I think he fought through that real well.

"For a young man, that's pretty tough on the mind. It worked out for him and he did a good job. He's an outstanding kid. He's one of those kids you'd adopt."

Bryan wants to continue playing soccer in college. He wasn't recruited by any schools and will have to walk on at UC Santa Barbra, trying to show that not getting recruited was just another misdiagnosis.

Matthew Peters may be reached at (760) 955-5365 or at mpeters@vvdailypress.com.

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